THE 

LD MAN IN THE CORNER 
TRAVELS THE MYSTERY OF 
BRUDENELL COURT 
AND THE 
TYTHERTON CASE 


BY 

BARONESS ORCZY >■ 


NEW 'HjP YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




COPYRIGHT, 1924, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 1 


3 Cl A 7 9 3 5 7 7 £/ 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 
— B — 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


J 

JUN -7 1924 




THE MYSTERY OF 
BRUDENELL COURT 


“ T^V ID you ever make up your mind about that 
Brudenell Court affair?’ 7 the Old Man in 
the Corner said to me that day. 

“No,” I replied. “As far as I am concerned, the 
death of Colonel Forburg has remained a complete 
mystery.” 

“You don’t think,” he insisted, “that Morley Thrall 
was guilty?” 

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know what to think.” 

“Then don’t do it,” he rejoined, with a chuckle. “If 
you don’t know what to think, then it’s best not to 
think at all. At any rate, wait until I have told you 
exactly what did happen—not as it was reported in the 
newspapers, but in the sequence in which the various 
incidents occurred. 

“On Christmas Eve, last year, while the family were 
at dinner, there was a sudden commotion and cries of 
‘Stop, thief! ’ issuing from the back premises of Brude¬ 
nell Court, the country seat of a certain Colonel For¬ 
burg. The butler ran in excitedly to say that Julia 
Mason, one of the maids, was drawing down the blinds 
in one of the first-floor rooms, when she saw a man 
fiddling with the shutters of the French window in the 
smoking-room downstairs. She at once gave the alarm, 


4 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


whereupon the man bolted across the garden in the 
direction of the five-acre field. The colonel and his 
stepson, as well as two male guests who were dining 
with them, immediately jumped up and hurried out to 
help in the chase. It was a very dark night, people 
were running to and fro, and for a few moments there 
was a great deal of noise and confusion, through which 
two pistol shots in close succession were distinctly 
heard. 

“The ladies—amongst whom was Miss Monica Glen- 
luce, the colonel’s stepdaughter—had remained in the 
dining-room, and the dinner was kept waiting, pending 
the return of the gentlemen. They straggled in one 
by one, all except the colonel. The ladies eagerly 
asked for news. The gentlemen could not say much; 
the night was very dark, and they had just waited about 
outside until some of the indoor men who had given 
chase came back with the news that the thief had been 
caught. 

“This news was confirmed by young Glenluce, Miss 
Monica’s brother, who was the last to return. He had 
actually witnessed the capture. The thief had bolted 
straight across the five-acre meadow, but doubled back 
before he reached the stables, turned sharply to the 
right through the kitchen garden, and then jumped 
over the boundary wall of the grounds into the lane be¬ 
yond, where he fell straight into the arms of the local 
constable who happened to be passing by. 

“Young Glenluce had great fun out of the chase; he 
had guessed the man’s purpose, and instead of run¬ 
ning after him across the meadow, he had gone round 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 5 

it, and had reached the boundary wall only a few sec¬ 
onds after the thief had scaled it. There was some 
talk about the gun-shots that had been heard, and 
every one supposed that Colonel Forburg, who was a 
violent-tempered man, had snatched up a revolver be¬ 
fore giving chase to the burglar, and had taken a pot¬ 
shot at him; it was fortunate that he had missed him. 

“The incident would then have been closed, and the 
interrupted dinner proceeded with, but for the fact that 
the host had not yet returned. Nothing was thought of 
this at first, for it was generally supposed that the 
colonel had been kept talking by one of his men, or 
perhaps by the constable who had effected the capture; 
it was only when close on half an hour had gone by 
that Miss Monica became impatient. She got the but¬ 
ler to telephone both to the stables and the lodge, but 
the colonel had not been seen at either place, either 
during or after the incident with the burglar; communi¬ 
cation with the police station brought the same result; 
nothing had been seen or heard of the colonel. 

“Genuinely alarmed now, Miss Monica gave orders 
for the grounds to be searched; it was just possible that 
the colonel had fallen whilst running, and was lying 
somewhere helpless in the dark, perhaps unconscious. 
Every one began recalling those pistol shots, and a 
vague sense of tragedy spread over the entire house. 
Monica blamed herself for not having thought of all 
this before. 

“A search party went out at once; for a while stable- 
lanterns and electric-torches gleamed through the dark¬ 
ness and past the shrubberies. Then suddenly there 


6 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


were calls for help, the wandering lights centered in one 
spot, somewhere in the middle of the five-acre meadow 
near the big elm tree. Obviously there had been an ac¬ 
cident. Monica ran to the front door, followed by all 
the guests. Through the darkness a group of men 
were seen slowly wending their way towards the house; 
one man was running ahead; it was the chauffeur. 
Young Glenluce, half guessing that something sinister 
had occurred, went forward to meet him. 

“What had happened was indeed as tragic as it was 
mysterious; the search party had found the colonel 
lying full-length in the meadow. His clothes were 
saturated with blood; he had been shot in the breast, 
and was apparently dead. Close by a revolver had 
been picked up. It was impossible to keep the terrible 
event from Miss Monica. Her brother broke the news 
to her. She bore up with marvelous calm, and it was 
she who at once gave the necessary orders to have her 
stepfather’s body taken upstairs and to fetch both the 
doctor and the police. 

“In the meanwhile, the guests had gone back into 
the house. They stood about in groups, awestruck 
and whispering; they did not care to finish their din¬ 
ner, or to go up to their rooms, as in all probability 
they would be required when the police came to make 
inquiries. Monica and Gerald Glenluce had gone to sit 
in the smoking-room. 

“It was the most horrible Christmas Eve any one in 
that house had ever experienced. 

“Murder committed from any other motive than that 
of robbery,” the Old Man in the Corner went on after 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 7 

a moment’s pause, “always excites the interest of the 
public. There is nearly always an element of mystery 
about it, and it invariably suggests possibilities of ro¬ 
mance. In this case, of course, there was no question 
of robbery. After Colonel Forburg fell, shot, as it 
transpired, at close range and full in the breast, his 
clothes were left untouched; there was loose silver in 
his trousers pocket, a few treasury notes in his letter- 
case, and he was wearing a gold watch and chain and 
a fine pearl stud. 

“The motive of the crime was therefore enmity or 
revenge, and here the police were at once confronted 
with a great difficulty; not, mind you, the difficulty of 
finding a man who hated the colonel sufficiently to kill 
him, but that of choosing among his many enemies 
one who was most likely to have committed such a ter¬ 
rible crime. He was the best-hated man in the county. 
Known as ‘Re-mount Forburg,’ he was generally sup¬ 
posed to have made his fortune in some shady transac¬ 
tions connected with the Re-mount Department of the 
War Office during the Boer War, more than twenty 
years ago. 

“His first wife was said to have died of a broken 
heart, and he had no children of his own. Some ten 
years ago he had married a widow with two young 
children. She had a considerable fortune of her own, 
and when she died she left it in trust for her children, 
but she directed that her husband should be the sole 
guardian of Monica and Gerald until they came of age; 
moreover, she left him the interest of the whole of the 
capital amount for so long as they were in his house 


8 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


and unmarried. After his death the money would re¬ 
vert unconditionally to them. 

“Of course it was a foolish, one might say a criminal 
will, and one obviously made under the influence of 
her husband. One can only suppose that the poor 
woman had died without knowing anything of ‘Re¬ 
mount Forburg’s’ character. Since her death, his vio¬ 
lent temper and insufferable arrogance had alienated 
from the children every friend they ever had. Only 
some chance acquaintances ever came anywhere near 
Brudenell Court now. Naturally every one said that 
the colonel’s behavior was part of a scheme for keep¬ 
ing suitors away from his stepdaughter Monica, who 
was a very beautiful girl. As for Gerald Glenluce, 
Monica’s younger brother, he had been sadly disfigured 
when he was a schoolboy through a fall against a sharp 
object that had broken his nose and somewhat mys¬ 
teriously deprived him of the sight of one eye. 

“Those who had suffered most from Colonel For¬ 
burg’s violent tempers declared that the boy’s face had 
been smashed in by a blow from a stick, and that the 
stick had been wielded by his stepfather. Be that as 
it may, Gerald Glenluce had remained, in consequence 
of this disfigurement, a shy, retiring, silent boy, who 
neither played games, nor rode to hounds, and had no 
idea how to handle a gun. But he was essentially the 
colonel’s favorite; where Forburg was harsh and dic¬ 
tatorial with every one else, he would always unbend 
to Gerald, and was almost gentle and affectionate to¬ 
wards him. Perhaps an occasional twinge of remorse 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 9 

had something to do with this soft side of his disagree¬ 
able character. 

“Certainly that softness did not extend to Monica. 
He made the girl’s life unbearable with his violence, 
which amounted almost to brutality. The girl hated 
him, and openly said so. Her one desire was to get 
away from Brudenell Court by any possible means. 
But, owing to her mother’s foolish will, she had no 
money of her own, and the few friends she had were 
not sufficiently rich, or sufficiently disinterested, to give 
her a home away from her stepfather; nor would the 
colonel, for a matter of that, have given his consent 
to her living away from him. 

“As for marriage, it was a difficult question. Young 
men fought shy of any family connection with 4 Re¬ 
mount Forburg.’ The latter’s nickname was bad 
enough, but there were rumors of secrets more unavow- 
able still in the past history of the colonel. Certain it 
is that though Monica excited admiration wherever she 
went, and though one or two of her admirers did go to 
the length of openly courting her, the courtship never 
matured into an actual engagement; something or other 
always occurred to cool off the ardor of the wooers. 
There would, perhaps, be a scene of fond farewell, but 
Monica would always understand that the farewell was 
a definite one, and, as she was an intelligent as well as 
a fascinating girl, she put two and two together, and 
observed that these farewell scenes were invariably pre¬ 
ceded by a long interview behind closed doors between 
her stepfather and her admirer of the moment. 


10 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


“Small wonder, then, that she hated the colonel. 
She hated him as much as she loved her brother. A 
great affection had, especially of late, developed be¬ 
tween these two; it was a love born of an affinity of 
trouble and sense of injustice; on Gerald’s part there 
was also an element of protection towards his beauti¬ 
ful sister; the fact that he was so avowedly the spoilt 
son of his irascible stepfather enabled him many a time 
to stand between Monica and the colonel’s unbridled 
temper. 

“Latterly, however, some brightness and romance 
had been introduced into the drab existence of Monica 
Glenluce by the discreet courtship of her latest ad¬ 
mirer, Mr. Morley Thrall. Mr. Thrall was a wealthy 
man, not too young, and of independent position, who 
presumably did not care whether county society would 
cut him or no in consequence of his marriage with the 
stepdaughter of ‘Re-mount Forburg.’ 

“Subsequent events showed that he had observed the 
greatest discretion while he was courting Monica. No 
one knew that there was an understanding between him 
and the girl, least of all the colonel. Mr. Morley Thrall 
came, not too frequently, to Brudenell Court; while 
there he appeared to devote most of his attention to his 
host and to Gerald, and to take little if any notice of 
Monica. She had probably given him a hint of rocks 
ahead, and he had succeeded in avoiding the momentous 
interview with the colonel which Monica had learned to 
look on with dread. 

“Mr. Morley Thrall had been asked to stay at 
Brudenell Court for Christmas, the other guests being 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT n 

a Major Rawstone, with his wife and daughter Rachel. 
They were all at dinner on that memorable Christmas 
Eve when the tragedy occurred, and all the men hur¬ 
ried out of the dining-room in the wake of their host 
when first the burglary alarm was given. 

“Thus did matters stand at Brudenell Court when, 
directly after the holidays, Jim Peyton, a groom re¬ 
cently in the employ of Colonel Forburg, was brought 
before the magistrates charged with the murder of his 
former master. There was a pretty stiff case against 
him, too. It seems that he had lately been dismissed 
by Colonel Forburg for drunkenness, and that before 
dismissing him the colonel had given him a thrashing 
which apparently was well deserved, because while he 
was drunk he very nearly set fire to the stables, and 
an awful disaster was only averted by the timely arrival 
of the colonel himself upon the scene. 

“Be that as it may, the man went away swearing 
vengeance; subsequently he took out a summons for 
assault against Colonel Forburg, and only got one 
shilling damages. This had occurred a week before 
Christmas. There were several witnesses there who 
could swear to the threatening language used by Pey¬ 
ton on more than one occasion since then, and of course 
he had been caught in the very act of trying to break 
into the house through the French window of the 
smoking-room. 

“On the other hand, the revolver with which ‘Re¬ 
mount Forburg’ had been shot, and which was found 
close to the body with two empty chambers, was identi¬ 
fied as the colonel’s own property, one which he always 


12 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


kept, loaded, in a drawer of his desk in the smoking- 
room. And—this is the interesting point—the shut¬ 
ters of the smoking-room were found by the police- 
inspector, who examined them subsequently, to be 
bolted on the inside, just as they had been left earlier 
in the evening by the footman whose business it was 
to see to the fastening of windows and shutters on the 
ground floor. 

“This fact—the shutters being bolted on the inside— 
was confirmed by Miss Monica Glenluce, who had been 
the first to go into the smoking-room after the tragic 
event. Her brother joined her subsequently. Both of 
these witnesses said that the room looked absolutely 
undisturbed, the shutters were bolted, the drawer of 
the desk was closed; they had remained in the room 
until after the visit of the police-inspector. 

“After the positive evidence of these two witnesses, 
the police prosecution had of necessity to fall back on 
the far-fetched theory that Colonel Forburg himself, 
before he hurried out in order to join in the chase 
against the burglar, had run into the smoking-room 
and picked up his revolver, and that, having overtaken 
Peyton, he had threatened him; that Peyton had then 
jumped on him, wrenched the weapon out of his hand, 
and shot him. It was a far-fetched theory, certainly, 
and one which the defense quickly upset. Gerald 
Glenluce, for one, was distinctly under the impression 
that the colonel ran from the dining-room straight out 
into the garden, and a young footman who was watching 
the fun from the front door, and saw the colonel run 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 13 

out, was equally sure that he had not a revolver in his 
hand. 

“Peyton got six months hard for attempted house¬ 
breaking; there really was no evidence against him to 
justify the more serious charge; but when the charge 
of murder was withdrawn, it left the mystery of ‘Re¬ 
mount Forburg’s’ tragic end seemingly more impene¬ 
trable than before. Nevertheless, the coroner and jury 
labored conscientiously at the inquest. No stone was 
to be left unturned to bring the murderer of ‘Re-mount 
Forburg’ to justice; and in this laudable effort the 
coroner had the able and unqualified assistance of Miss 
Glenluce. However bitter her feelings may have been 
in the past towards her stepfather while he lived, she 
seemed determined that his murderer should not go 
unpunished. Nay, more, there appeared to be in all 
her actions during this terrible time a strange note of 
vindictiveness and animosity, as if the unknown man 
who had rid her of an arrogant and brutal tyrant had 
really done her a lasting injury. 

“It was entirely through her energy and exertions 
that certain witnesses were induced to come forward 
and give what turned out to be highly sensational evi¬ 
dence. The police, who were convinced that James 
Peyton was guilty, had turned all their investigations 
in the direction of proving their theories. Miss Monica, 
on the other hand, had seemingly made up her mind 
that the murderer was to be sought for inside the house; 
it even appeared as if she had certain suspicions which 
she only desired to confirm. To this end she had ques- 


14 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

tioned and cross-questioned every one who was in the 
house on that fatal night, well knowing how reluctant 
some people are to be mixed up in any way with police 
proceedings. But at last she had forced two persons 
to speak, and it was on the first day of the inquest 
that at last a glimmer of light was thrown upon the 
mysterious tragedy. 

“After the medical evidence, which went to estab¬ 
lish beyond a doubt that Colonel Forburg died from a 
shot wound inflicted at close range, both balls having 
penetrated the heart, Miss Glenluce was called. Re¬ 
plying to the coroner, who had put certain questions 
to her with regard to the colonePs state of mind just 
before the tragedy, she said that he appeared to have a 
premonition that something untoward was about to 
happen. When the butler ran into the dining-room, 
saying that a burglar had been seen trying to break into 
the house, the colonel had jumped up from the table at 
once. 

“ T did the same,’ Miss Monica went on, ‘as I was 
genuinely alarmed; but my stepfather, in his peremp¬ 
tory way, ordered me to sit still. “I believe,” he said 
to me, with a funny laugh, “that it’s a put-up job. It’s 
some friend of Thrall’s giving him a hand.” I could 
not, of course, understand what he meant by that, and 
I looked at Mr. Thrall for an explanation. I must 
add that Mr. Thrall had been extraordinarily moody 
all through dinner; he appeared flushed, and I noticed 
particularly that he never spoke either to my step¬ 
father, to my brother, or to me. However, at the mo¬ 
ment I failed to catch his eye, and the very next second 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 15 

he was out of the room, on the heels of Colonel For- 
burg.’ 

“This was remarkable evidence, to say the least of 
it, but nevertheless it was confirmed by two witnesses 
who heard the colonel make that strange remark; one 
was Rachel Rawstone, the young friend who was dining 
at Brudenell Court that Christmas Eve, and the other 
was Gerald Glenluce. But there was more to come. 
Thanks again to Miss Monica’s insistence, the footman 
at Brudenell Court, a lad named Cambalt, had been 
induced to come forward with a story which he had evi¬ 
dently intended to keep hidden within his bosom, if 
possible. He gave his evidence with obvious reluctance, 
and in a scarcely audible voice. It was generally no¬ 
ticed, however, that Miss Monica urged him frequently 
to speak up. 

“Cambalt deposed that just before dinner on Christ¬ 
mas Eve, he had gone in to tidy the smoking-room be¬ 
fore the gentlemen came down from dressing. As he 
opened the door he saw Mr. Morley Thrall standing in 
the middle of the room facing Colonel Forburg, who 
was seated at his desk. Young Mr. Glenluce was 
standing near the mantelpiece with one foot on the 
fender, staring into the fire. Mr. Thrall, according to 
witness, was livid with rage. 

“ ’E took a step forward like,’ Cambalt went on, 
amidst breathless silence on the part of public and 
jury alike, 'and ’e raised ’is fist. But the colonel ’e 
just laughed, then ’e opened the drawer of the desk and 
took out a revolver, and showed it to Mr. Thrall and 
says: “ ’Ere y’are, there’s a revolver ’andy, any way.” 


16 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


Then Mr. Thrall ’e swore like anything, and says: “You 

blackguard, you d- scoundrel I You ought to be 

shot like the cur you are!” I thought he would strike 
the colonel, but young Mr. Glenluce ’e just stepped 
quickly in between the two gentlemen, and ’e says: 
“Look ’ere, Thrall! I won’t put up with this! You 
jess get out!” Then one of the gentlemen seed me, 
and Mr. Thrall ’e walked out of the room.’ 

“ ‘And what happened after he had gone?’ the 
coroner asked. 

“ ‘Oh,’ the witness replied, “the colonel ’e threw the 
revolver back into the drawer, and laughed sarcastic 
like. Then ’e ’eld out ’is ’and to Mr. Gerald, and says: 
“Thanks, my boy! You did ’elp me to get rid of that 
ruffian.” After that,’ Cambalt concluded, ‘I got on 
with my work, and the gentlemen took no notice of 
me.’ 

“This witness was very much pressed with questions 
as to what happened later on when the burglary alarm 
was given and the gentlemen all hurried out of the 
house. Cambalt was in the hall at the time, and he 
made straight for the front door to see some of the fun; 
he said that the colonel was out first, and the other 
three gentlemen, Mr. Gerald, Mr. Rawstone, and Mr. 
Morley Thrall, went out after him; Mr. Thrall was the 
last to go outside; he ran across the garden in the di¬ 
rection of the five-acre field. Major Rawstone re¬ 
mained somewhere near the house; but it was a very 
dark night, and he, Cambalt, soon lost sight of the 
gentlemen. Presently, however, Mr. Thrall came back 
towards the house. It was a few minutes after the 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 17 

shots had been fired, and witness heard Mr. Thrall say 
to Major Rawstone: T suppose it’s that fool Forburg 
potting away at the burglar; he’ll get himself into trou¬ 
ble, if he doesn’t look out.’ Soon after that Mr. Gerald 
came running back with the news that the burglar had 
fallen into the arms of a passing constable, and Cam- 
bait then returned to his duties in the dining-room. 

“As you see,” the Old Man in the Corner went on 
glibly, “this witness’ evidence was certainly sensa¬ 
tional. The jury, which was composed of farm la¬ 
borers, with the local butcher as foreman, had by 
now fully made up its silly mind that Mr. Morley 
Thrail had taken the opportunity of sneaking into the 
smoking-room, snatching up the revolver, and shooting 
‘Re-mount Forburg,’ whom he hated because the colonel 
was opposing his marriage with Miss Monica. It was 
all as clear as daylight to those dunderheads, and from 
that moment they simply would not listen to any more 
evidence. They had made up their minds; they were 
ready with their verdict, and it was: Manslaughter 
against Morley Thrall. Not murder, you see! The 
dolts, who had all of them suffered from ‘Re-mount 
Forburg’s’ arrogance and violent temper would not ad¬ 
mit that killing such vermin was a capital crime. The 
following day Mr. Morley Thrall, himself a J.P., was 
brought up before his brother magistrates on an ig¬ 
nominious charge. 

“It is not often,” the Old Man in the Corner resumed 
after a while, “that so serious a charge is preferred 
against a gentleman of Mr. Morley Thrall’s social posi¬ 
tion, and I am afraid that the best of us are snobbish 


18 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


enough to be more interested in a gentleman criminal 
than in an ordinary Bill Sykes. 

“I happened to be present at that magisterial in¬ 
quiry when Mr. Morley Thrall, J.P., was brought in 
between two warders, looking quite calm and self-pos¬ 
sessed. Every one of us there noticed that when he 
first came in, and in fact throughout that trying in¬ 
quiry, his eyes sought to meet those of Miss Glenluce, 
who sat at the solicitor’s table; but whenever she 
chanced to look his way, she quickly averted her gaze 
again, and turned her head away with a contemptuous 
shrug. Gerald Glenluce, on the other hand, made pa¬ 
thetic efforts at showing sympathy with the accused, 
but he was of such unprepossessing appearance and was 
so shy and awkward that it was small wonder Morley 
Thrall took little if any notice of him. 

“Very soon we got going. I must tell you, first of 
all, that the whole point of the evidence rested upon a 
question of time. If the accused took the revolver out 
of the desk in the smoking-room, when did he do it? 
The footman, Cambalt, reiterated the statement which 
he had made at the inquest. He was, of course, pressed 
to say definitely whether, after the quarrel between 
Mr. Morley Thrall and the colonel which he had wit¬ 
nessed, and before every one went in to dinner, Mr. 
Thrall might have gone back to the smoking-room and 
extracted the revolver from the drawer of the desk; but 
Cambalt said positively that he did not think this was 
possible. He himself, after he had tidied the smoking- 
room, had been in and out of the hall preparing to serve 
dinner; the door of the smoking-room gave on the hall, 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 19 

between the dining-room and the passage leading to the 
kitchens. If any one had gone in or out of the smok¬ 
ing-room at that time, Cambalt must have seen them. 

“At this point Miss Glenluce was seen to lean forward 
and to say something in a whisper to the Clerk of the 
Justices, who in his turn whispered to the Chairman on 
the Bench, and a moment or two later that gentleman 
asked the witness: 

“ ‘Are you absolutely prepared to swear that no one 
went in or out of the smoking-room while you were 
making ready to serve dinner? 

“Then, as the young man seemed to hesitate, the 
magistrate added more emphatically: 

“ ‘Think, now! You were busy with your usual avo¬ 
cations; there would have been nothing extraordinary 
in one of the gentlemen going in or out of the smoking- 
room at that hour. Do you really believe, and are you 
prepared to swear, that such a very ordinary incident 
would have impressed itself indelibly upon your mind?’ 

“Thus pressed and admonished, Cambalt retrenched 
himself behind a vague: ‘No, sir. I shouldn’t like to 
swear one way or the other.’ 

“Whereat Miss Monica threw a defiant look at the 
accused, who, however, did not as much as wink an 
eyelid in response. 

“Presently, when that lady herself was called, no 
one could fail to notice that she, like the coroner’s jury 
the previous day, had absolutely made up her mind 
that Morley Thrall was guilty; otherwise her attitude 
of open hostility towards him would have been quite 
inexplicable. She dwelt at full length on the fact that 




20 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


Mr. Thrall had paid her marked attention for months, 
and that he had asked her to marry him; she had given 
him her consent, and between them they had decided 
to keep their engagement a secret until after she, Mon¬ 
ica, had attained her twenty-first birthday, when she 
would be free to marry whom she chose. 

“ ‘Unfortunately,’ the witness went on, suddenly as¬ 
suming a dry, pursed-up manner, ‘Colonel Forburg got 
wind of this; he was always very much set against my 
marrying at all, and between tea and dinner on Christ¬ 
mas Eve he and I had some very sharp words together 
on the subject, at the end of which my stepfather said 
very determinedly: “Christmas or no Christmas, the 
fellow shall leave my house by the first available train 
to-morrow, and to-night I am going to give him a piece 
of my mind.” ’ 

“Just for a moment after Miss Glenluce had finished 
speaking the accused seemed to depart from his atti¬ 
tude of dignity and reserve, and an indignant ‘Oh!’ 
quickly repressed, escaped his lips. The public by this 
time was dead against him; they are just like sheep, as 
you know, and the verdict of the coroner’s jury had 
prejudiced them from the start, and the police, aided by 
Miss Glenluce, had certainly built up a formidable case 
against the unfortunate man. 

“I should be talking until to-morrow morning were I 
to give you in detail all the evidence that was adduced 
in support of the prosecution. The accused listened to 
it all with perfect calm; he stood with arms folded, his 
eyes fixed on nothing. The ‘Oh!’ of indignation did 
not again cross his lips, nor did he look once at Miss 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 21 

Monica Glenluce. I can assure you that at one mo¬ 
ment that day things were looking very black against 
him. 

“Fortunately for him, however, he had a very clever 
lawyer to defend him in the person of his distinguished 
cousin, Sir Evelyn Thrall. The latter, by amazingly 
clever cross-examination of the servants and guests at 
Brudenell Court, had succeeded in establishing the fact 
that at no time, from the moment that the burglary 
alarm was given until after the two revolver shots had 
been heard, was the accused completely out of sight 
of some one or other of the witnesses. He was the last 
to leave the dining-room; Mrs. Rawstone and her 
daughter testified to that. He had stayed behind one 
moment after the other three gentlemen had gone out 
in order to say a few words to Monica Glenluce. Miss 
Rawstone was standing inside the dining-room door, 
and she was quite positive that Mr. Thrall went straight 
out into the garden. 

“On the other hand, Major Rawstone saw him in 
the forecourt coming away from the five-acre meadow 
only a very few moments after the shots were fired, 
and gave it absolutely as his opinion that it would have 
been impossible for the accused to have fired those 
shots. This is where the question of time came in. 

“ 'When a man who bears a spotless reputation,’ 
Major Rawstone argued, 'finds that he has killed a fel¬ 
low creature, he would necessarily pause a moment, 
horror-struck with what he has done; whether the deed 
was premeditated or involuntary, he would at least try 
and ascertain if life was really extinct. It is inconceiv- 


22 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


able that any man save an habitual and therefore cal¬ 
lous criminal would just throw down his weapon and 
with absolute calm, hands in pockets, and without a 
tremor in his voice, make a casual remark to a friend. 
Now, I saw Mr. Morley Thrall perhaps two minutes 
after the shots were fired; in that time he could not 
have walked from the center of the field to the fore¬ 
court where I was standing; and he had not been run¬ 
ning, as his voice was absolutely clear, and he came 
walking towards me with his hands in his pockets.’ 

“As was only to be expected, Sir Evelyn Thrall made 
the most of Major Rawstone’s evidence. With equal 
skill, too, Sir Evelyn brought forward evidence to bear 
out the statement made by the accused on the matter 
of his quarrel with Colonel Forburg. 

“ ‘Just before dinner,’ Mr. Thrall stated, ‘Colonel 
Forburg told me he had something to say to me in 
private. I followed him into the smoking-room, and 
there he gave me certain information with regard to his 
past life, and also with regard to Miss Glenluce’s 
parentage, which made it absolutely impossible for me, 
in spite of the deep regard which I have for that lady, 
to offer her marriage. Miss Glenluce is the innocent 
victim of tragic circumstances in the past, and Forburg 
was just an unmitigated blackguard, and I told him so; 
but I had my family to consider, and very reluctantly 
I came to the conclusion that I could not introduce any 
relation of Colonel Forburg into its circle. Colonel 
Forburg did not stand in the way of my marrying his 
stepdaughter; it was I who most reluctantly withdrew.” 

“Whilst the accused was cross-examined upon this 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 23 

l 

statement—and he gave his answers in firm, dignified 
tones—Miss Monica never took her eyes off him, and 
surely, if looks could kill, Mr. Morley Thrall would not 
at that moment have escaped with his life, so full of 
deadly hatred and contempt was her gaze. The accused 
had signed a much fuller statement than the one which 
he made in open court; it contained a detailed account 
of his interview with Colonel Forburg, and of the cir¬ 
cumstances which finally induced him to give up all 
thoughts of asking Miss Glenluce to be his wife. 

“These facts were not made public at the time for 
the sake of Miss Monica and of the unfortunate Gerald, 
but it seems that the transactions which had earned for 
the Colonel the 'sobriquet of ‘Re-mount Forburg’ were 
so disreputable and so dishonest that not only was he 
cashiered from the Army, but he served a term of im¬ 
prisonment for treason, fraud, and embezzlement. He 
had no right to be styled colonel any longer, and quite 
recently had been threatened with prosecution if he 
persisted in making further use of his Army rank. 

“Rut this was not all the trouble. It seems that in 
his career of improbity he had been associated with a 
man named Nosdel, a man of Dutch extraction whom 
he had known in South Africa. This man was subse¬ 
quently hanged for a particularly brutal murder, and 
it was his widow who was “Re-mount Forburg’s’ second 
wife, and the mother of Monica and of Gerald, who 
had been given the fancy name of Glenluce. 

“Obviously a man in Mr. Morley Thrall’s position 
could not marry into such a family, and it appears that 
whenever there was a question of a suitor for Monica, 


24 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

‘Re-mount Forburg’ would tell the aspirant the whole 
story of his own shady past, and above all that of 
Monica’s father. Sir Evelyn Thrall had been clever 
enough to discover one or two gentlemen who had had 
the same experience as his cousin Morley; they, too, 
just before their courtship came to a head, had had a 
momentous interview with ‘Re-mount Forburg,’ who 
found this means of choking off any further desire for 
matrimony on the part of a man who had family con¬ 
nections to consider. But it was very obvious that Mr. 
Morley Thrall had no motive for killing ‘Re-mount 
Forburg’; he would have left Brudenell Court that very 
evening, he said, only that young Glenluce had begged 
him, for Monica’s sake, not to make a scene; anyway, 
he was leaving the house the next day, and had no in¬ 
tention of ever darkening its door again. 

“Poor Monica Glenluce or Nosdel, ignorant of the 
hideous cloud that hung over her entire life, ignorant, 
too, of what had passed between her stepfather and Mr. 
Morley Thrall, felt nothing but hatred and contempt 
for the man whose love, she believed, had proved as un¬ 
stable as that of any of her other admirers. Presuma¬ 
bly he found means to make her understand that all 
was irrevocably at an end between them as far as he 
was concerned, whereupon her regard for him turned to 
bitterness and desire for revenge. 

“And, indeed, but for the cleverness of a distinguished 
lawyer, poor Morley Thrall might have found himself 
the victim of a judicial error brought about by the 
deliberate enmity of a woman. Had he been committed 
for trial, she would have had more time at her disposal 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 25 

to manufacture evidence against him, which I am con¬ 
vinced she had a mind to do.” 

“As it is,” I now put in tentatively, for the Old Man 
in the Corner had been silent for some little while, “the 
withdrawal of the charge of murder against Morley 
Thrall did not help to clear up the mystery of ‘Re¬ 
mount Forburg’s tragic death.” 

“Not so far as the public is concerned,” he retorted 
dryly. 

“You have a theory?” I asked. 

“Not a theory,” he replied. “I know who killed 
‘Re-mount Forburg.’ ” 

“How do you know?” I riposted. 

“By logic and inference,” he said. “As it was proved 
that Morley Thrall did not kill him, and that Miss 
Monica could not have done it, as the ladies did not 
join in the chase after the burglar, I looked about me 
for the only other person in whose interest it was to 
put that blackguard out of the way.” 

“You mean—” 

“I mean the boy Gerald, of course. Openly and be¬ 
fore the other witness, Cambalt, he stood up for his 
stepfather against Thrall, who was not measuring his 
words; but just think how the knowledge which he had 
gained about his own parentage and that of his sister 
must have rankled in his mind. He must have come 
to the conclusion that while this man—his stepfather— 
lived, there would be no chance for him to make friends, 
no chance for the sister whom he loved ever to have a 
home, a life of her own. Whether that interview on 
Christmas Eve was the first inkling which he had of the 


26 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


real past history of his own and Forburg’s family, it is 
impossible to say. Probably he had suspicions of it 
before, when, one by one, Monica’s suitors fell away 
after certain private interviews with the colonel. Mor- 
ley Thrall must have been a last hope, and that, too, 
was dashed to the ground by the same infamous means. 

“I am not prepared to say that the boy got hold of 
the revolver that night with the deliberate intention of 
killing his stepfather at the earliest opportunity; he 
may have run into the smoking-room to snatch up the 
weapon, only with a view to using it against the bur¬ 
glar; certain it is that he overtook ‘Re-mount Forburg’ 
in the five-acre field, and that he shot him then and 
there. Remember that the night was very dark, and 
that there was a great deal of confusion. The boy was 
nimble enough, after he had thrown down the revolver, 
to run across the field, and then to go back to the house 
by a roundabout way.” 

“But,” I objected, “how could young Glenluce run 
into the smoking-room, pick the revolver out of a 
drawer, and run back through the hall, with servants 
and guests standing about? Some one would be sure 
to see him.” 

“No one saw him,” the funny creature retorted, “for 
he did it at the moment of the greatest confusion. The 
butler had run in with the news of the burglary, the 
colonel jumped up and ran out through the hall, the 
guests had not yet made up their minds what to do. In 
moments like this there are always just a few seconds 
of pandemonium quite sufficient for a boy like Gerald 
to make a dash for the smoking-room.” 


THE MYSTERY OF BRUDENELL COURT 27 

“But after that—” 

“He took the revolver out of the drawer and ran out 
through the French window.” 

“But the shutters were found to be bolted on the 
inside,” I argued, “when they were examined by the 
police.” 

“So they were/’ he admitted. “Miss Monica had al¬ 
ready been in there with young Gerald. They had seen 
to the shutters.” 

“Then you think that Monica knew?” 

“Of course she did.” 

“Then her desire to prove Morley Thrall guilty—” 

“Was partly hatred of him, and partly the desire to 
shield her brother,” the Old Man in the Corner con¬ 
cluded, as he collected his bit of string, and his huge 
umbrella. “Think it over; you will see that I am right. 
I am sorry for those two—aren’t you? But they are 
selling Brudenell Court, I understand, and their 
mother’s fortune has become theirs absolutely. They 
will go abroad together, make a home for themselves, 
and one day perhaps everything will be forgotten, and 
a new era of happiness will arise for the innocent, now 
that the guilty has been so signally punished. But it 
was an interesting case. Don’t you agree with me?” 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 


“"V Hk THAT do you make of this?” the Old Man in 

V/\ the Corner said to me that afternoon. “A 
curious case, is it not?” 

And with his claw-like fingers he indicated the para¬ 
graph in the “Evening Post” which I had just been 
perusing with great interest. 

“At best,” I replied, “it is a very unpleasant business 
for the Carysforts.” 

“And at worst?” he retorted with a chuckle. 

“Well—” I remarked, dryly. 

“Do you think they are guilty?” he asked. 

“I don’t see who else—” 

“Ah!” he broke in, with his usual lack of manners, 
“that is such a stale argument. One doesn’t see who 
else, therefore, one makes up one’s mind that so-and-so 
must be guilty. I’ll lay an even bet with any one that 
out of a dozen cases of miscarriage of justice, I could 
point to ten that were directly due to that fallacious 
reasoning. 

“Now, take as an example the Tytherton case, in 
which you are apparently interested. It was an un¬ 
precedented outrage which stirred the busy provincial 
town to its depths, the victim, Mr. Walter Stonebridge, 
being one of its most noted solicitors. He had his office 
in Tytherton High Street, and lived in a small, detached 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 29 

house on the Great West Road. The house stood in the 
middle of a small garden, and had only one story 
about the ground floor. Mr. Walter Stonebridge was 
a bachelor, and his domestic staff consisted of a mar¬ 
ried couple Henning by name—who did all that was 
necessary for him in the house. 

It was on the last evening of February. The Hen¬ 
nings had gone upstairs to their room as usual at ten 
o’clock. Mr. Stonebridge was at the time sitting in his 
study on the ground floor. He was in the habit of sit- 
ting up late, reading and writing. On this occasion, he 
told the Hennings to close the shutters and lock the 
back door as usual, but to leave the front door on the 
latch as he was expecting a visitor. The Hennings 
thought nothing of that, as one or two gentlemen— 
friends, or sometimes clients of Mr. Stonebridge— 
would now and then drop in late to see him. Anyway, 
they went contentedly to bed. 

“A little while later—they could not exactly recollect 
at what hour, because they had already settled down 
for the night—they heard the front-door bell, and im¬ 
mediately afterwards Mr. Stonebridge’s footsteps along 
the hall. Then suddenly they heard a crash, followed 
by what sounded like a struggle, then a smothered cry, 
and finally silence. Henning was out of bed, and on 
the landing with a candle, in an instant, when he heard 
Mr. Stonebridge’s voice calling up to him from below: 

“ ‘It’s all right, Henning. I caught my foot in this 
confounded rug. That’s all.’ 

“Henning looked over the banister, holding the can¬ 
dle high, and seeing nothing, he shouted down: 


30 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


“ ‘Shall I give you a ’and, sir?’ 

“But Mr. Stonebridge at once replied, quite cheerily: 

“ ‘No, no! I’m all right. You go back to bed.” 

“And Henning did as he was told. Nor did he or 
his wife hear anything more during the night. But in 
the early morning when Mrs. Henning came downstairs, 
she was horrorstruck to find Mr. Stonebridge in the 
dining-room, lying across the table, to which he was 
securely pinioned with a rope; a serviette taken out of 
the sideboard drawer had been tied tightly around his 
mouth, and his eyes were blindfolded with his own 
pocket handkerchief. 

“The woman’s screams brought her husband upon 
the scene. Together they set to work to rescue their 
master from his horrible plight. At first they thought 
that he was dead, and Henning was for fetching the 
police immediately; but his wife declared that Mr. 
Stonebridge was just unconscious, and she started to 
apply certain household restoratives and made Henning 
force some brandy through Mr. Stonebridge’s lips. 

“Presently, the poor man opened his eyes, and gave 
one or two other signs of returning consciousness, but 
he was still very queer and shaky. The Hennings then 
carried him upstairs, undressed him and put him to bed; 
and then Henning ran for the doctor. 

“Well! It was days, or, in fact, weeks before Mr. 
Stonebridge had sufficiently recovered to give a co¬ 
herent statement of what happened to him on that fate¬ 
ful night, and—which was just as much to the point— 
what had happened the previous day. The doctor had 
prescribed complete rest in the interim. The patient 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 31 

had suffered from concussion and I know not what; 
and those events had got so mixed up in his brain, that 
to try and disentangle them was such an effort, that 
every time he attempted it, it nearly sent him into a 
brain fever. But in the meanwhile, his friends had 
been busy—notably, Mr. Stonebridge’s head clerk, Mr. 
Medburn, who was giving the police no rest. There 
was, even without the evidence of the principal witness 
concerned, plenty of facts to go on, to make out a case 
against the perpetrator of such a dastardly outrage. 

“That robbery had been the main motive of the as¬ 
sault, was easily enough established. A small fire and 
burglar-proof safe, which stood in a corner of the 
morning-room, had been opened and ransacked. When 
examined, it was found to contain only a few trinkets, 
which had probably a sentimental value, but were other¬ 
wise worthless. The key of the safe—one of a bunch— 
was still in the lock, which went to prove, either that 
Mr. Stonebridge had the safe open when he was at¬ 
tacked, or what was more likely, considering the solici¬ 
tor’s well-known careful habits, that the assailant had 
ransacked his victim’s pockets after he had knocked 
him down. A pocket-book, torn, and containing only a 
few unimportant papers, lay on the ground. There 
had been a fire in the room at the time of the outrage, 
and careful analysis of the ashes found in the hearth, 
revealed the presence of a quantity of burnt paper. 

“But robbery being established as the motive of the 
outrage did not greatly help matters, because, while Mr. 
Stonebridge remained in such a helpless condition, it 
was impossible to ascertain what booty his assailant 


32 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

had carried away. Soon, however, the first ray of light 
was thrown upon what had seemed until this hour an 
impenetrable mystery. 

“It appears that Mr. Medburn was looking after the 
business in High Street during his employer’s absence; 
and one morning—it was on the Monday following the 
night of the outrage—he had a visit from a client, who 
sent in his name as Felix Shap. The head clerk knew 
something about this client, who had recently come 
over to England from somewhere abroad, in order to 
make good his claim to certain royalties on what is 
known as the Shap Fuelettes—a kind of cheap fuel 
which was launched some time before the War by Sir 
Alfred Carysfort, Bart., of Tytherton Grange, and out 
of which that gentleman made an immense fortune, and, 
incidentally got his title thereby. 

“This man, Shap—a Dutchman by birth—was, it ap¬ 
pears, the original inventor and patentee of these 
fuelettes, and Mr. Carysfort, as he was then, had met 
him out in the Dutch East Indies, and had bought the 
invention from him for a certain sum down, and then 
exploited it in England first, and afterwards all over the 
world at immense profit. Sir Alfred Carysfort died 
about a year ago, leaving a fortune of over a million 
sterling, and was succeeded in the title and in the 
managing-directorship of the business by his eldest son, 
David, a married man with a large family. The busi¬ 
ness had long since been turned into a private limited 
liability company, the bulk of the shares being held by 
the managing-director. 

“The fact that the patent rights in the Shap Fuelettes 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 33 

had been sold by the inventor to the late Alfred Carys- 
fort had never been in dispute. It further appeared 
that Felix Shap had at one time been a very promising 
mining engineer, but that in consequence of incurable, 
intemperate habits he had gradually drifted down the 
social scale. He lost one good appointment after an¬ 
other, until finally, he was just an underpaid clerk in 
the office of an engineer in Batavia, whose representa¬ 
tive in England was Mr. Alfred Carysfort. The latter 
was on a visit to the head office in Batavia some twelve 
years ago, when he met Shap, who was then on his 
beam-ends. He had recently been sacked by his em¬ 
ployers for intemperance, and was on the fair way to 
becoming one of those hopeless human derelicts, who 
usually end their days either on the gallows or in a 
convict prison. 

“But at the back of Shap’s fuddled mind there had 
lingered throughout his downward career the remem¬ 
brance of a certain invention which he had once pat¬ 
ented, and which he had always declared would one day 
bring him an immense fortune. But though he had 
spent quite a good deal of money in keeping up his 
patent rights, he had never had the pluck and per¬ 
severance to exploit or even to perfect his invention. 

“Alfred Carysfort on the other hand, was brilliantly 
clever, he was ambitious, probably none too scrupulous, 
and at once he saw the immense possibilities, if properly 
worked, of Shap’s rough invention, and he set to work 
to obtain the man’s confidence, and, presumably, by 
exercising certain persuasion and pressure he got the 
wastrel to make over to him, in exchange for a few 


34 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

hundred pounds, the entire patent rights in the Fuel- 
ettes. 

“The transaction was, as far as that goes, perfectly 
straightforward and above board; it was embodied in a 
contract drawn up by an English solicitor, who was the 
British Consul in Batavia at the time; nor was it— 
taking everything into consideration—an unfair one. 
Shap would never have done anything with his inven¬ 
tion, and a clean, wholesome and entirely practical fuel 
would probably have been thus lost to the world. But 
there remains the fact that Alfred Carysfort died a 
dozen years later worth more than a million sterling, 
every penny of which he had made out of an invention 
for which he had originally paid less than five hundred. 

“Mr. Medburn had been put in possession of these 
facts some few weeks previously, when Mr. Felix Shap 
had first presented himself at the private house of Mr. 
Stonebridge. He came armed with a letter of introduc¬ 
tion from a relative of Mr. Stonebridge’s, whom he had 
met out in Java, and he was accompanied by a friend 
—an American named Julian Lloyd—who was piloting 
him about the place, and acting as his interpreter and 
secretary, as he himself had never been in England and 
spoke English very indifferently. His passport and 
papers of identification were perfectly in order. He ap¬ 
peared before Mr. Stonebridge as a man still on the 
right side of sixty, who certainly bore traces on his pre¬ 
maturely wrinkled face and in his tired, lusterless eyes 
of a life spent in dissipation rather than in work, but 
otherwise, he bore himself well, was well-dressed and 
appeared plentifully supplied with money. 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 35 

“The story that he told Mr. Stonebridge through the 
intermediary of his friend, Julian Lloyd, was a very 
curious one. According to his version of various trans¬ 
actions which took place between himself and the late 
Sir Alfred Carysfort, the latter had, some time after 
the signing of the original contract, made him a defi¬ 
nite promise in writing , that should the proceeds in the 
business of the Shap Fuelettes exceed £10,000 in any 
one year, he, Sir Alfred, would pay the original inventor, 
out of his own pocket, a sum equivalent to twenty per 
cent, of all such profits over and above the £10,000, 
with a minimum of £200. 

“Mr. Shap had brought over with him all the cor¬ 
respondence relating to this promise, and, moreover, he 
adduced as proof positive that Sir Alfred had looked 
on that promise as binding, and had at first loyally 
abided by it, the fact that until 1916 he had paid to Mr. 
Felix Shap the sum of £200 every year. These sums 
had been paid half-yearly through Sir Alfred’s bankers, 
and acknowledgments were duly sent by Shap direct 
to the bank. All of which could, of course, be easily 
verified. But in the year 1916 these payments suddenly 
ceased. Mr. Shap wrote repeatedly to Sir Alfred, but 
never received any reply. At first he thought that there 
were certain difficulties in the way owing to the Euro¬ 
pean War, so, after a while, he ceased writing. But 
presently there came the Armistice. Mr. Shap wrote 
again and again, but was again met by the same ob¬ 
stinate silence. 

“In the meanwhile he had come to the end of his re¬ 
sources. He had spent all that he had ever saved; but, 


36 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

nevertheless, he was determined that as soon as he 
could scrape up a sufficiency of money he would go to 
England in order to establish his rights. Then, in 
1922, he heard of Sir Alfred Carysfort’s death. It was 
now or never if he did not mean to acquiesce silently in 
the terrible wrong which was being put upon him. For¬ 
tunately, he had a good friend in Mr. Julian Lloyd, 
who had helped him with money and advice, and at 
last he had arrived in England. 

“Mr. Stonebridge, after he had seen the late Sir 
Alfred’s bankers about the payments to Shap, and con¬ 
sulted an expert on the subject of the all-important let¬ 
ter signed by Alfred Carysfort, sought an interview 
with Sir David. From the first there seemed to be an 
extraordinary amount of acrimony brought into the 
dispute by both sides. This was understandable enough 
on the part of Felix Shap who felt he was being de¬ 
frauded of his just dues by men who were literally coin¬ 
ing money out of the product of his brain. But the 
greatest bitterness really appeared to come from the 
other side. 

“At first Sir David Carysfort refused even to discuss 
the question, and denied all knowledge as to the reason 
or object of the payments, but after a while he must 
have realized that public opinion was beginning to 
raise its voice on the subject, and that it was not 
exactly singing the praises of Sir David Carysfort, 
Bart. 

“Although Mr. Stonebridge had, of course, been dis¬ 
cretion itself, Mr. Shap had admittedly not the same 
incentive to silence, and what’s more, his friend, Mr. 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 37 

Lloyd, made it his business to get as much publicity 
for the whole affair as he could. Paragraphs in the 
local papers had begun to appear with unabated regu¬ 
larity, and though there were no actual comments on 
the case as a whole, no prejudging of respective merits, 
there were unmistakable hints that it would be in Sir 
David’s interest to put dignity on one side and come 
out frankly into the open with explanations and sug¬ 
gestions. Soon the London papers got hold of the 
story, and you know what that means. The Radical 
press simply battened on a story which placed a poor, 
down-at-heel inventor in the light of a victim to the in¬ 
satiable greed and frank dishonesty of a high-born 
profiteer. 

“Whether it was pressure from outside, or from his 
own family that suddenly induced Sir David to ‘come 
out into the open,’ is not generally known, certain it is 
that presently he condescended to give an explanation 
of the mysterious half-yearly payments made by his 
father to Felix Shap, and the explanation was so roman¬ 
tic, and frankly so far-fetched, that most people—es¬ 
pecially men—refused to accept it. Notably Mr. Stone- 
bridge—it was not the business of a lawyer to listen 
to sentimental stories, least of all was it the business of 
the lawyer acting on the other side. 

“The story told by Sir David Carysfort was this: 

“The late Sir Alfred, when quite a young man, had 
gone out as clerk to that same engineering firm in Ba¬ 
tavia, whom he represented later on. It was then that 
he first met Felix Shap, who had not yet begun to go 
downhill. An intimacy sprang up between Alfred 


38 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

Carysfort and Shap’s sister, Berta, and the two were 
secretly married in Batavia. A year later Berta had a 
son, whose birth she only survived by a few hours. The 
marriage had been an unhappy one from the first, and 
Carysfort was only too thankful when his firm called 
him back to England, and he was able to shake off the 
dust of Batavia from his feet, as he hoped, for ever. 
He never spoke of his marriage, nor did he ever recog¬ 
nize or have anything to do with his son. By some pe¬ 
cuniary arrangement entered into with Felix Shap, the 
latter undertook to provide for and look after the boy, 
to give him his own name, and never to trouble his 
brother-in-law about him again. A deed-poll was, Sir 
David believed, duly executed, and the boy assumed 
the name of Alfred Shap. 

“Some years later, there occurred the transaction over 
the Shap Fuelettes. Alfred Carysfort had come to 
Batavia on business. He had met Felix Shap again, 
who by this time had become a hopeless wastrel. The 
contract for the sale of the patent rights in the Fuelettes 
was duly executed, but whether after seeing his son 
once more, the call of the blood became more insistent 
in the heart of Alfred Carysfort, or whether he merely 
yielded to blackmail, Sir David could not say; certain, 
it is, that after a while when the profits of the Shap 
Fuelettes Company became subtantial, Sir Alfred took 
to sending over a couple of hundred pounds every year 
to Shap for the benefit of young Alfred. Then the War 
broke out. Young Alfred joined the Australian Expe¬ 
ditionary Force, and was killed in Gallipoli in August, 
1915. As soon as Sir Alfred had definite news of the 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 39 

boy’s death, he naturally stopped all further payments 
to Shap. 

“The story, as you see, sounded plausible enough; 
and if it proved to be untrue, it would reflect great 
credit on Sir David’s gift of imagination. Felix Shap, 
as was only to be expected, denied it from beginning to 
end. The whole thing, he declared, was an impudent 
falsehood, based on a semblance of truth. It was quite 
true that he had adopted and for years had cared for 
his sister’s son, who was subsequently killed in Gallip¬ 
oli. It was also true that Alfred Carysfort had years 
ago paid some attention to his sister Berta, but there 
never was any question of marriage between them; 
young Carysfort deeming himself far too grand and 
well-born to marry the daughter of an obscure East 
Indian trader. Berta had subsequently married a man 
of mixed blood, who deserted her, and went off some¬ 
where to Argentina or Honduras, Shap did not know 
where; at any rate, he was never heard of again. 

“In proof of his version of the romantic story, Felix 
Shap actually had a copy of his sister’s marriage certifi¬ 
cate, as well as one or two letters, written at different 
times to his sister Berta by her rascally husband. He 
had, indeed, plenty of proofs for his assertions. But 
when Mr. Stonebridge asked for confirmation of Sir 
David’s story, the latter appeared either unprepared or 
unwilling to produce any. Whereupon, Mr. Stonebridge, 
on behalf of his client, entered an action for the recov¬ 
ery of certain royalties due to him on the sales of the 
Shap Fuelettes, the amount to be presently agreed on 
after examination of the audited accounts. 


40 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

“Thus matters stood when on that Wednesday night 
in February last, Mr. Stonebridge was found gagged 
and unconscious, the victim of a murderous and inex¬ 
plicable assault. 

“On the Saturday following, Mr. Felix Shap, accom¬ 
panied by his friend, Mr. Lloyd, called on Mr. Med- 
burn at the office in High Street. They had read in the 
papers certain details which had filled Shap with appre¬ 
hension. He had read that the safe in the morning- 
room in Mr. Stonebridge’s house had been obviously 
ransacked, and that the analysis of the ashes in the 
grate had revealed the presence of a large quantity of 
burnt paper. 

“ ‘My friend, Mr. Shap, would like you to put his 
mind at rest, Mr.—er—Medburn,’ Mr. Lloyd said, in 
an anxious, agitated tone of voice, ‘that the papers re¬ 
lating to his case, which he entrusted to Mr. Stone¬ 
bridge, are safely locked up in a safe at this office.’ 

“Unfortunately, the head clerk was not able to satisfy 
Mr. Shap on that point. Mr. Stonebridge had never 
brought the papers to the office, nor had Mr. Medburn 
ever seen them. His impression was—he regretted to 
say—that Mr. Stonebridge had, for the time being, 
kept all papers relating to this particular case at his 
private house; just as he had always seen Mr. Shap 
there rather than at the office. Of course, Mr. Med¬ 
burn hastened to assure his visitor that Mr. Stonebridge 
may have kept the documents in some other secure 
place. Mr. Medburn couldn’t say, not having access to 
all his employer’s papers, but, in any case, he would 
make a comprehensive search for the missing docu- 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 41 

ments, and if nothing was found, he would at once in¬ 
form the police. 

“An evening or two later the papers came out with 
flaring headlines: 'Amazing Developments in the Tyth- 
erton Outrage. Missing Documents. Sensational Turn 
in the Shap Fuelettes Case.’ And so on. The head 
clerk had made an exhaustive search amongst his em¬ 
ployer’s papers, but not a trace could he find of any 
documents relative to Mr. Shap’s case. One and all 
had disappeared. The original letter from Alfred 
Carysfort promising to pay an extra twenty per cent, 
on the profits of the Shap Fuelette Company under cer¬ 
tain conditions, the letters from the scoundrel who had 
been Berta’s husband, together with the copy of Berta’s 
marriage certificate, everything was gone—every proof 
of the truth of the story which Felix Shap had come 
all this way to tell. 

“The next exciting incident,” the Old Man in the 
Corner continued, glibly, “in this remarkably mysteri¬ 
ous case, was the news that Mr. Allan Carysfort, eldest 
son of Sir David Carysfort, Bart., had been detained in 
connection with the assault upon Mr. Stonebridge and 
the disappearance of certain papers, the property of 
Mr. Felix Shap of Batavia. 

“Young Allan Carysfort, who was a subaltern in a 
cavalry regiment, had come home from India recently, 
and as a matter of fact, he had arrived at the Grange, 
the family seat just outside Tytherton, the very evening 
of the outrage. Acting upon certain information re¬ 
ceived, the police had detained him; he was to be 
brought before the magistrates on the following day; 


42 


THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 


and, in the meanwhile, it was generally understood that 
some highly sensational evidence had been collected by 
the police. 

“Need I say, that the following day, when the young 
man was brought before the magistrates, the court was 
crowded. Sir David was a magistrate, too, but, of 
course, he did not sit that day. To see his eldest son 
arraigned before his brother beaks must have been a 
bitter pill for his pride to swallow. 

“We had the usual formal evidence of arrest, the 
medical evidence, and so on; after which we quickly 
plunged into exciting business. Mr. Stonebridge, we 
were soon told, had made a statement. He was 
not yet strong enough to appear in person, but he 
had made a statement; so, at last, the public was to be 
initiated into the mysteries that surrounded the inex¬ 
plicable assault. 

“ ‘After my servants had gone to bed,’ Mr. Stone- 
bridge had stated, ‘I sat awhile reading in my study. 
I was expecting a visit from Mr. Shap, as we had more 
or less arranged a quiet chat at my house that evening 
on the subject of his affairs. He and Mr. Lloyd, who 
were both of them very fond of the cinema, were in the 
habit of dropping in after the show, on their way home. 
At about a quarter to eleven—I am sure it was not 
later—there was a ring at the front-door bell, and I 
went to open the door. No sooner had I done this, than 
a shawl, or muffler of some sort, was thrown over my 
face, and I was made to lose my balance by the thrust 
of a foot between my two shins. I came down back¬ 
wards with a crash. 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 43 

u ‘The whole thing occurred in fewer seconds than it 
takes to describe; the next moment, I had the sensation 
of cold steel against my temple, I heard an ominous 
click, and a husky voice whispered in my ear: “Your 
servant is coming out of his room. Speak to him, tell 
him you are all right, or I shoot.” What could I do? I 
was utterly helpless, and a revolver was held to my 
temple. The muffler was then lifted from my mouth, 
I could feel the man bending over me, I could feel his 
hot breath on my forehead, and a few seconds later I 
heard Henning come out of his room upstairs on the 
landing. “If he comes downstairs,” the voice whispered 
close to my ear, “I shoot.” 

“ ‘Then it was,’ Mr. Stonebridge went on to say, 
‘that I shouted up to Henning that I had only tripped 
over a rug, and that I was quite all right. I don’t think 
I ever looked death so very near in the face before. 
The next moment I heard Henning go back to his room. 
After that I remember nothing more. I only have a 
vague recollection of a sudden terrible pain in my head; 
everything else is a blank until I found myself in bed, 
and with vague stirrings of memory bringing a return 
of that same appalling headache.’ 

“The great point about Mr. Stonebridge’s evidence 
was that he was utterly unable to identify his assailant. 
He was not even sure whether he had been attacked by 
two men or one, since he had been blindfolded at the 
outset, and all that he heard was a husky voice that 
spoke in a whisper. He was ready to admit that he 
might have left the safe unlocked when he went to an¬ 
swer the front-door bell, and he certainly had the pa- 


44 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

pers relating to Mr. Shap’s case on his desk, as he had 
been going through them earlier in the evening. Those 
papers, therefore, had undoubtedly been burned in the 
grate, and it was obvious that the theft and destruction 
of those papers was the motive of the assault. 

“After that we went from excitement to excitement. 
We did not get it all the same day, of course. Allan 
Carysfort appeared, as far as I can remember, three or 
four times before the local magistrates. In between 
times he was out on bail, this having been fixed 

at £1,000 in two recognizances £500 each, with 

an additional £500 on his own. It seems that 

when he was arrested he had made a statement, 
to which he had since then unreservedly sub¬ 

scribed. He said that he had arrived in London 
from Southampton on Monday the twenty-sixth, and 
after seeing to some business in town, he took the eight- 
ten p.m. train on the twenty-eighth to Tytherton, where 
he arrived at nine-fifty, having dined on board. His 
father met him at the station with the car, but it was 
such a beautiful moonlit night, Sir David and himself 
decided that they would walk to the Grange, and 
then sent the car home with a message to Lady 
Carysfort that they would be home at about eleven 
o’clock. 

“Carysfort had been asked whether it was not strange 
that after being absent from home for so long, he should 
have elected to put off seeing his mother till a much 
later hour. 

“ ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘My father wished to put 
me au fait with certain family matters before I actually 


45 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 

saw Lady Carysfort. These matters/ he added, em¬ 
phatically, in reply to questions put to him by the 
magistrate, ‘had nothing whatever to do with financial 
business, least of all, were they in any relation to Mr. 
Shap and his affairs. My father and 1/ he went on, 
calmly, ‘walked about for a while, and then my father 
remembered that he wished to see a friend at the 
County Club. He went in there, but I preferred to take 
another turn out of doors, as I had not had a taste of 
English country air for nearly two years. 

“Asked how long he had walked about Tytherton 
waiting for Sir David, Carysfort thought about half an 
hour; and when questioned as to the direction he had 
taken, he said he really couldn’t remember. 

The police, of course, produced certain witnesses, 
whose testimony would justify the course they had 
taken in arresting a gentleman in the position of Mr. 
Allan Carysfort. There was, first of all, Felix Shap 
himself and his friend Julian Lloyd; they deposed that 
at about half-past ten, or perhaps a little earlier, they 
were on their way to see Mr. Stonebridge, as the latter 
had expressed a wish to see them both and have an¬ 
other quiet talk over a cigar and a glass of wine. Shap 
and Lloyd had been to the P.P.P. cinema in High 
Street, and they left just before the end to go to Mr. 
Stonebridge’s house. They were within fifty yards of 
it, when they saw a man turn out of the nearest side 
street, and go up to Mr. Stonebridge’s house. The man 
went through the garden gate and up to the front door; 
Shap and Lloyd saw him in the act of ringing the bell. 
It was then somewhere between ten-thirty and ten- 


46 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

forty-five. Mr. Stonebridge was so very much in the 
habit of seeing friends, and even those clients with 
whom he was intimate, late in the evenings, that Mr. 
Shap and Mr. Lloyd didn’t think anything of the inci¬ 
dent; but, at the same time, they made up their minds 
to postpone their own visit to Mr. Stonebridge until 
they could be quite sure of seeing him alone. So they 
turned then and there, and went straight back to the 
Black Swan where they lodged. 

“I may add that, with commendable reserve, both 
these witnesses refused to identify Allan Carysfort with 
Mr. Stonebridge’s visitor on that memorable Wednes¬ 
day evening. The man they saw had no overcoat and 
wore a bowler hat. More they could not say, as they 
had not seen his face clearly. 

“On the other hand, the hall-porter at the County 
Club, another witness for the Treasury, had no cause 
for such reserve. He said that on the evening of Feb¬ 
ruary twenty-eighth, Sir David Carysfort came to the 
Club a little before half-past ten. Mr. Allan was with 
him then, but he didn’t come in. The hall-porter heard 
him say to Sir David: ‘Very well, then! I’ll pick you 
up here in about half an hour!’ And Sir David re¬ 
joined: ‘Yes! Don’t be late!’ Mr. Allan did return 
to the Club at about eleven o’clock, and the two gentle¬ 
men then went off together. The hall-porter remem¬ 
bered the incident on that date quite distinctly, because 
he recollected being much surprised at seeing Mr. Allan 
Carysfort, whom he thought was still abroad. 

“After that there was another remand. Allan Carys- 
fort’s solicitor having asked and obtained an adjourn- 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 47 

ment for a week. But, by this time, as you may 
imagine, not only the county, but London Society, too, 
were absolutely horror-struck. To think that a man in 
the position of the Carysforts should have stooped to 
such an act, not only of violence but of improbity, was 
indeed staggering. Nor did public opinion swerve from 
this attitude one hair’s breadth, even though at the 
next hearing, all the proofs which the police had ad¬ 
duced against the accused were absolutely confuted. 

“Fortunately, for Carysfort, his solicitors had been 
successful in finding two witnesses, Miriam Page and 
Arthur Ormeley, who had seen Mr. Allan Carysfort, 
whom they knew by sight, strolling by the river at a 
quarter to eleven. They—like the hall-porter of the 
County Club—remembered the circumstance very 
clearly, because they did not know that Mr. Allan was 
home from abroad, and were astonished to see him 
there. 

“The point of the evidence of these witnesses was 
that the river where they had seen Allan Carysfort 
strolling at a quarter to eleven is at the diametrically 
opposite end of the town to that where lies the Great 
West Road. Now the hall-porter had seen Allan Carys¬ 
fort outside the County Club at half-past ten and again 
at eleven. If Carysfort was strolling by the river at a 
quarter to eleven, and there was no reason to impugn 
the credibility of the witnesses, he could not possibly 
have been the man whom Mr. Shap and Mr. Lloyd 
saw ringing the bell of Mr. Stonebridge’s house at 
about that same hour. 

“Allan Carysfort was discharged by the magistrates, 


48 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

as you know. There was no definite proof against him. 
But public opinion is ever an uncertain quantity, and 
it is still dead against the Carysforts. In the public 
mind, two facts have remained indelibly fixed; first, 
that the Carysforts had everything to gain by the de¬ 
struction of Felix Shap’s papers; and secondly, that 
there was nobody else who could possibly have bene¬ 
fited by it. 

“Since then, also, Mr. Stonebridge has made a 
declaration that nothing was stolen out of his safe and 
pocket-book except the papers and letters belonging to 
Felix Shap. So, what would you? Although Allan 
Carysfort was discharged, he did not leave the court 
without a stain on his character. The stain was there, 
and there it is to this day. It will take the Carysforts 
years to live the scandal down. Though some friends 
have remained loyal, there are always the enemies, the 
envious, the uncharitable, and they insist that the two 
witnesses—the only two, mind you, whose evidence did 
clear Allan Carysfort of suspicion—had been bought, 
and should not be believed.” 

He gave a dry cackle, and contemplated me through 
his huge horn-rimmed spectacles. 

“And you are of that opinion, too, I imagine,” he 
said. 

“Well,” I rejoined, “I don’t see who else had any 
interest in doing away with those documents.” 

“I’ll tell you,” he rejoined, dryly. “Felix Shap him¬ 
self.” 

“What do you mean?” I queried, with as much lofty 
scorn as I could command. 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 49 

“I mean,” he replied, “that all Felix Shap’s docu- 
ments were forgeries.” 

“Forgeries?” I exclaimed. 

“Yes! Spurious! False affidavits! Forgeries, the 
lot of ’em. My belief is, that Stonebridge began to sus¬ 
pect this himself, and I think he has had a narrow 
escape of being murdered outright by those two rascals. 
As it is, they have destroyed every proof of their vil¬ 
lainy; and old Stonebridge, I imagine, is content to let 
things remain as they are rather than admit publicly 
that he was completely taken in by two very plausible 
rogues.” C 

“But,” I urged, “what about the handwriting ex¬ 
pert?” 

The funny creature laughed aloud. 

“Yes!” he said. “What about the expert? If there 
had been two they would have disagreed. And, mind 
you, at a distance of twelve years, a signature would 
be difficult of absolute identification. Every one’s 
handwriting undergoes certain modifications in the 
course of years. Experts,” he reiterated. “Bah!” 

“But,” I went on, impatiently, “I don’t see the ob¬ 
ject of the whole scheme.” 

“The object was blackmail,” the whimsical creature 
retorted, “and it has succeeded admirably. Already, 
we read that Messrs. Shap and Lloyd are staying at 
expensive hotels in London, that they have granted in¬ 
terviews to pressmen, and written articles for half¬ 
penny newspapers. We shall hear of them as cinema 
stars presently. They have had the most gorgeous, the 
most paying publicity; and presently Sir David Carys- 


50 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

fort will have had enough of them, and will put a few 
more hundreds in their pockets just to be rid of them. 
That was the object of the whole scheme, my dear 
young lady! 

“Of course, the fuddle-headed Dutchman never 
thought of it. I imagine that the whole scheme origi¬ 
nated in the fertile brain of Mr. Julian Lloyd. And it 
was thoroughly well thought out from the manufacture 
of the documents and letters down to the assault on 
the silly old country attorney. And, mind you, the 
rascals originally went to a silly country attorney; they 
would have been afraid to go to a London lawyer, lest 
he be too sharp for them. 

“The only mistake they made were the letters pur¬ 
ported to be written to Berta Shap by the husband who 
is supposed to have disappeared, and the copy of Berta’s 
marriage certificate. It is those letters that gave me 
the clew to the whole thing. Old Stonebridge was too 
dull to have seen through those letters. If they were 
genuine why should Felix Shap have brought them over 
to England? They had nothing whatever to do with 
any contract about the Shap Fuelettes. If they were 
genuine, how could he guess that he would have to dis¬ 
prove a story of a secret marriage, and of young Alfred 
being the son of Sir Alfred Carysfort? By wanting to 
prove too much, he, to my mind, gave himself away; 
and one can but marvel that neither lawyers nor police 
saw through the roguery. 

“Of course, the moment one understands that one set 
of papers was spurious, it is easily concluded that all 
the others were forgeries. And the late Sir Alfred 


THE TYTHERTON CASE 51 

Carysfort, anxious only to obliterate every vestige of 
that early marriage of his, unwittingly played into the 
hands of those two scoundrels by destroying all the 
correspondence that he had ever had with Shap. 

“Think it all over, you will see that I am right. Look 
at this paragraph again in the ‘Evening Post,’ does it 
not bear out what I say?” 

The paragraph in the evening paper to which the 
Man in the Corner was pointing, read as follo v 

“Among the passengers on the Dutch liner Stadt Rot¬ 
terdam is Mr. Felix Shap, the hero of a recent cele¬ 
brated case. He is returning to Batavia having, 
through a misadventure which has remained an im¬ 
penetrable mystery to this day, been deprived of all the 
proofs that would have established his claim to a sub¬ 
stantial share of the profits in the Shap Fuelettes Com¬ 
pany. Fortunately, Mr. Shap had enlisted so many 
sympathies in England that his friends had no difficulty 
in collecting a considerable sum of money, which was 
presented to him on his departure in the form of a 
purse and as a compensation for the ill-luck which has 
attended him since he set foot in this country. Mr. 
Shap will now be able to take abroad with him the as¬ 
surance that British public opinion is always on the 
side of the victims of an adverse and unmerited fate.” 

“Yes!” the funny creature concluded with a cackle. 
“Until the victims are found out to be rogues. Mr. 
Felix Shap and his friend Mr. Julian Lloyd will be 
found out some day.” 

The next moment he had gone with that rapidity 
which was so characteristic of him ; and I might have 


Jill X - 1924 


52 THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER 

thought that he was just a spook who had come to visit 
me, whilst I dozed over my cup of tea, only that on the 
table, by the side of an empty glass, was a piece of 
string adorned with a series of complicated knots. 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 






